


Bandaids and Bulletholes

by ishafel



Category: Archer (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 11:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4018051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You live like that, you live with ghosts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bandaids and Bulletholes

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for mention of rape/ noncon. Title is from Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood".

Archer was fourteen the first time, in the shower at St. Paul’s. He doesn’t tell her that. The hostage is a Peace Corps volunteer from either Minneapolis or Atlanta, young and probably pretty when her face isn’t swollen and her teeth aren’t broken. He holds her hand-- he thinks, because the combination of blood loss and morphine is making him feel oddly disconnected from his body-- and tries not to notice that, even bruised and filthy, her legs are very nice indeed.

“It gets better,” he says, blinking at her, “I promise.” He doesn’t tell her about the night he passed out and woke up to Luke fucking him, because he’s never told anyone that: that lying there, unmoving, hardly breathing, pretending it wasn’t happening so that he wouldn’t have to lose his best friend, is the hardest thing he’s ever done. That in the end, Luke still left for ODIN and Archer still lost him.

“It’s cold in here,” he says, “are you cold?” He hopes he isn’t bleeding out, just because Ray and Lana are being ridiculously slow securing ground transport to get them out of the city to the helicopter. Jesus, maybe he shouldn’t have driven the Jeep up the steps of the embassy, but how was he supposed to know the axle would break like that? “Hey, Peaches, Peaches--.”

“I’m Kathleen,” she says, pissed, like she’s told him that before. Which probably she has. He doesn’t really do details. “Peaches is--,” her voice breaks. “Peaches is dead.” 

He squeezes her fingers, or at least tries to; his hands aren’t exactly cooperating. He should probably be more worried about the way everything from his shoulders down seems numb, but the morphine and the Jack and Coke he had in the helicopter make it like its happening to someone else. “That gets better, too,” he says, and this time he’s definitely lying.

“Were you really--,” not-Peaches asks. 

“Yeah,” he says before she finishes, because he doesn’t say the word, even to himself. “Just, you--,” and he tells her about Kosovo, about how he pretended it was nothing at first, didn’t fight when they came and dragged him out of his cell. He’d fought the second time, but it hadn’t mattered. “You should probably, like, talk to somebody about it,” he says. 

“Did you?”

“ISIS doesn’t really encourage that kind of thing. I drink a lot instead.” He hadn’t told anyone, ever; the worst thing he could imagine was his mother finding out. He doesn’t like to think about what she’d say. She’s always hated weakness, always been disappointed in him. He must have more whiskey than blood in his body right now or he’d never have opened his mouth. “It worked okay.” He’d fucked one of the secretaries at ISIS, afterward, and made sure Lana caught him doing it.

It had worked, though: he could remember finishing a bottle of wine and a few cocktails and jogging through the dark, quiet city hours after midnight, the streets steaming gently. Or sliding into a smooth, anonymous body, someone who didn’t know his story or didn’t care. Throwing up, afterward, and the burn of liquor as he bent over a storm drain or the door of a towncar. “Maybe not perfectly.”

She’s crying again, so to distract her, he says, “Kathy? Kathy? KATHY?,” and when she jumps and turns to stare at him, “Hey. I remembered your name this time. Usually it takes me months.”

“God,” she says, half laughing, half crying. “What is wrong with you?”

“About that,” he says. “I kind of need you to come over here and stick your hand down my pants.” He waits for it, but apparently even Peace Corps volunteers from Minnesota aren’t saying “Phrasing” these days. She doesn’t move, and he sighs and says, “To see if I’m bleeding to death?”

She’s still fumbling with his belt when Lana comes in, and Archer takes the easy way out and faints before she can she can give him first aid with her giant hands.


End file.
